August 2014 Curling Club Newsletter

Welcome curlers young and old, novice and experienced. It is my hope that this coming year there are curling opportunities for everyone from youth programs to various types of leagues, open curling on Fridays (10am to 1pm beginning in November), and a few Learn to Curls thrown in for good measure!

Learn To Curl: We currently have two planned: Saturday October 18 and 25th from 3:30 t0 5:30.

Pint Night at the Kettlehouse November 5th 6 to 8 PM club benefits from every pint sold to all in attendance even non-curlers.

Fall/winter Leagues: We will have three leagues during the winter season going on concurrently, Competitive, Recreational, and Instructional (with a coach) from November 9th through mid-March on Saturday nights from 9pm to midnight, with 2 sets of 5 matches most nights depending on the number of teams. This year we have capacity to have 40 teams. Sign-up via our webpage by November 1st. Good news! Team fees for league are a bit less at $450 for 8 games guaranteed. Member fees are up a little this year, but if you volunteer time to club service you will get some money back (read about club service below).

Club Service: This year we will offer a rebate of $25 per person that completes 4 hours or more of MCC service. A sign-up sheet will be available in the equipment cabinet and an explanation of how it works also on the website. Duncan Lutes is the coordinator for the club service program.

Nonprofit status: We have now been granted non-profit status with the State and filed with the IRS (to be granted within the next few months). This is retroactive to the date of filing so if you have a sponsor for your team, they can claim a tax deduction! If you have a sponsor that is interested, they need a form from MCC for documentation – this will be available through the webpage soon.

Bonspiel: This year we are hosting the first annual Open (all experience levels and gender combinations) Bonspiel for the Mountain-Pacific (MoPac) Region of USA Curling. There will be a MoPac bracket (USAC curling teams from MoPac only) and an at-large bracket (with invitations to Canadian clubs). Awards will be presented to top finishers of each bracket. The top 2 teams from each bracket will playoff for overall Open champion. At the same time, we will run a 5 and under Big Sky Spiel for those teams with 5 or less years of experience. This 5U may be integrated into the Big Sky State Games that occur each year with many different sports teams…so that might be fun to add curling to the list of sports in that annual event.

I would encourage all of our MCC teams to try to participate this year in the Bonspiel weekend of March 27-29, either in the more competitive Open or the 5U spiel. This will be a major fund raiser for our club and we plan to design this for 60+ teams and will have both sheets of ice available to us with 5 curling sheets each. If you are interested in helping with the logistics and marketing, please let us know soon via missoulacurling@gmail.com

Spring League: Once again we will have a spring league on Monday nights April 6th through May 18th. Had a good turn out last spring so let’s do it again!

Youth program: This year we may host interested high school PE classes during the year. Last year we had 1,400 kids go through our youth PE program. We also had 2 high school teams in our league.

Montana Curling Network: New this year is a network of curling clubs sharing event dates and tips on curling etc. Members are MCC, Whitefish, Polson, Havre, Great Falls, Philipsburg, Butte, Bozeman, Billings, Glasgow, and the Coeur d’alene Curling Club.

Friday open curling is back: For 10 bucks on most Fridays from 11 am to 2 pm, times may vary a bit, beginning in November! Hosted by the Glacier Ice Rink.

I hope you all are back for another great season for those veteran teams, and I would like to welcome all new prospective curlers to form a team and have fun with the MCC this year. It will be a great year!